Free Life and Limb (The Ebon Chronicles) by Chris Capps Page A

myself toward the center, and started to slide.  The flashlight shone above me, turning the steps and divots at the corners of the ceiling into a quickly moving blur.  Soon the floor leveled out, and I saw Ebon up ahead shining the flashlight on the wall across from him.  My momentum slowed, and I stood up near him,
    "So what are the Keterling?" I said.
    "Don't worry, they're all dead," Ebon said, shining the flashlight to the left of the hallway, "What do you imagine that is?"
    Passages opened up, broke off from one another and created whole new passageways.  It was an organized labyrinth.  We took a few steps into the breach and our flashlights glinted off dozens of hallways, fanning out and then terminating into small rooms, each one as wide as the hallway we now occupied.
    "Passageways," Ebon said, "Hundreds of rooms.  Thousands, maybe.  How far could something like this go?"
    "You could fit an army down here," I said, breathless, leaning heavily on my cane.  The hallway, lined with passages and breaks we now faced, passed miles into the distance, each inch of it crafted from the same thick, nearly indestructible glass we had encountered in the rest of the tunnel.  It was intricate, an orderly maze of simplest design.  Master passage became an offshoot, these offshoots became still more, and lining the edges of each, a hundred simple door-less rooms lined either side.
    I turned and faced the other direction, realizing that the same had been done on the other side.  A map of the place as we saw it would have looked like a mile long fractal fern with short hairs lining the edges of each frond.  I returned to the master passageway, the one we had just slid into, and took a few steps more.  More offshoots, more fronds within.
    "More than that," I said at last, calling back to Ebon, "Drop it all down that hole, run electric lights, house a city.  Maybe two or three cities.  A small nation, perhaps."
    "Waste," Ebon muttered to himself, passing backward, "Such a waste."
    "This didn't come from space," I said.
    "No, it didn't," he said.
    "Maybe the star was a signal, telling us where this would be found."
    "That's not how it works," he said, his hand running up the cool glass along the wall, "Whatever it is, the architects made it for the world that once was, not the world that is now.  The thing we're looking for was made in space, crafted by an incredibly advanced machine.  That machine made others like it, and time passed - centuries - as it gathered materials.  In time, the small cluster of building drones grew, got everything they needed and began construction of the Plexis objects.  Many came from few.  Those few came from one."
    "Is that the meaning of your tattoo?" I asked, pointing at his scarred chest.  He nodded, pointing,
    "A man from one of your cities showed my brother this.  It was years ago, but we used to live in one of the Plexis objects.  It was a factory, and a home.  Water, food, textiles, even tools.  It either found or made everything we needed and more.  It was thirty stories tall, at least double that in length.  And then one of your cities came and tried to take it away from us.  We could have worked together, but we didn't.  We fought, and my brother Crassus died to save the rest of the Plexis tribe."
    "If that had happened to me," I said, "I wouldn't be so eager to help a walking city like mine.  Not if they claimed my brother."
    "They didn't claim my brother," Ebon said, "They were only part of it.  The thirsty Earth claimed my brother.  He destroyed himself to save Thunfir and the rest.  We made a lot of choices then that still scar us, as men do.  Tell me, Adon.  Have you known this Tyche long?"
    "I've known her for years.  We've talked from afar to one another.  The courting process in the city is very strict.  We have hours to talk in a given day, but we can only do it in specified areas and at specific times.  She was raised in the rectory.  From an early